


Me, Myself... and the Rest of You

by AParticularlyLargeBear



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Growing Up, Slow Build, Transgender
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:57:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3787480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AParticularlyLargeBear/pseuds/AParticularlyLargeBear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lukas isn't really much for mage rights or tearing down the Circles; so far as he's concerned, the well being of apostates starts and ends with him and him alone. However, when circumstances send him on the run and lead him to the city of Kirkwall in the midst of the Fifth Blight, a self-centred attitude becomes rather harder to maintain, especially as he finds, much to his surprise, a few others beginning to creep up his list of priorities.</p><p>Alyx hasn't had it easy these past few years. Darktown isn't a forgiving home for a teenager, especially with more refugees pouring into Kirkwall every day. Still, she has her friends, who pull together to make sure that they can all survive the day to day. Alyx, though, doesn't want to stay in the undercity forever, and while she may have been forced there by her own decisions, she dreams of a way up and out... and maybe a new friend can help her with that.</p><p>Takes place across the timeline of the DAII story, focusing on some of Kirkwall's smaller people; expect a good-sized cast consisting mostly of OCs. Several of the tags (especially character tags) are for later in the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Me, Myself... and the Rest of You

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Blood, Violence.

In Lukas’s defence, Kirkwall had seemed like a good idea at first. While there was a significant templar presence in the city, it had also suffered the biggest influx of refugees of all the states of the Free Marches, being the closest crossing from Blight-stricken Fereldan. In other words, a great place to lay low for a while and blend into the crowd. What untoward attention would one more Marcher attract when the city was groaning under the weight of the despairing and the desperate foreigners?

That was the theory anyway, and with the heat on him in Ostwick, Lukas hadn’t really had the luxury of time to make a decision. The templars, he reasoned, would surely be expecting him to flee inland, perhaps to Markham. Kirkwall hardly screamed sanctuary for an apostate on the run, and that’s what he had been counting on when he decided to head west along the coast. It was a shame; he’d spent the better part of his adulthood in Ostwick, and for the most part had gone without much scrutiny from the authorities. It was such a _stupid_ piece of bad fortune that had brought the templars down on his head, and just like that, he’d had to commit to fleeing for his life. It didn’t much matter whether they’d throw him in the Circle or come up with some pretence of him being a maleficar, either way was more or less a death sentence. Captivity was no better than an execution. In the eighteen years since his magic had manifested, age seven, he’d never harmed a soul that hadn’t first threatened his own safety, a record he didn’t intend on breaking any time soon. He wasn’t a danger to anyone else. However, the templars obviously disagreed, and the moment his contacts let him know that his appearance was circulating amongst the knights, Lukas knew that it was time to make tracks and leave Ostwick.

Hence, Kirkwall.

It really _had_ seemed like a good idea at the time. That was the logic that Lukas was clinging to, as best he could.

It gave him someone – namely the Lukas of about two weeks ago – to be righteously infuriated with for landing him into yet another mess.

That being, bare minutes after Lukas had slipped past a dingy side gate in the city walls and into the undercity which he had on reliable authority that the locals charmingly referred to as ‘Darktown’, he was accosted by thugs. A gang of thugs. With knives.

Lukas swallowed, looking from one side to the other. There were a half dozen of them, and in the dim, squalid environment, all blind corners and winding staircases, he couldn’t be certain if they had friends. Honestly, though, the six thugs on their own were enough to send pricklings of anxiety down his spine without contemplating reinforcements. They were singularly streaked with dirt, wearing filth-encrusted clothes, and eyeing him in a fashion that could only be described as hungry. Two were dwarves; good to know that thieves in this town were equal-opportunity scumbags.

They hadn’t _said_ anything yet, but they were very much blocking his path, and it was very much in a deliberate fashion. They’d moved across to bar the way from either side, and Lukas wasn’t sure that there was even enough room to squeeze past if he tried. And if they let him, of course.

The silence stretched onward. Well, this was just getting uncomfortable now.

“Can I get past?” Lukas ventured, feeling that, while there was absolutely no chance that they were going to say yes, fruitless appeals to the better nature were apparently some requisite part of getting mugged that he was missing.

“This is Carta territory, friend,” said the dirtiest and scummiest looking of the lot, saying ‘friend’ in a tone which most certainly meant ‘hapless victim’. “And we ain’t in the business of letting folk cross through our turf for free.”

Because of course they weren’t. No gang ever secured an area out of the interests of keeping it safe. No, instead it was all about shaking down businesses (though calling the type of stall one was likely to find in these dismal settings a ‘business’ was probably generous) and robbing passers-by. Lukas gritted his teeth, studying the group for a moment. Their expressions were impassive at best, and openly disdainful at worst. He didn’t doubt that they were prepared to back up their threats with steel, and Lukas hadn’t seen a single guard since he’d passed into Kirkwall. No help was likely to come for him if this turned violent. There were of course bystanders hovering in the shadows, a handful of gawkers lined up to watch the unfortunate victim either cough up his coinpurse or wind up in the gutter. Lukas wondered if any of them had called the rights to filch the boots from his corpse yet.

For a brief instant, Lukas contemplated bringing his magic to bear. He even went so far as to focus his concentration inward, touching the hidden power that lay within, preparing to conjure it forth, and then quelled that solution with a thought. No. The point of coming here was to keep a low profile. He couldn’t very well hope to fade into the crowds if his first act on arriving in the city was to start slinging fireballs around. Word of something like that would spread almost as quickly as the flames through the rotten wood of this place, and it would hardly be much of a leap for the templars to contact the closest city and discover that an apostate of Lukas’s description had managed to slip their noose.

It was actually a little irritating how good a likeness the artist had managed to create of him on the wanted poster. Trust Lukas to, the one time he finally showed his face in the wrong place at the wrong time, have it be to the templar with the most ridiculously good memory in Ostwick’s Circle.

They’d got the shaven head, the five o’clock shadow, even the light acne scars across his left cheek. The sketch, which was as best as he could tell rendered in charcoal, had also managed to depict, accurately, the dusky hue of his skin _and_ the slight discolouration right across the bridge of his nose. If it wasn’t for the part underneath the picture which had a ‘DANGEROUS APOSTATE, REWARD FOR INFORMATION’ caption in huge capitals, Lukas might have kept it. Frankly, the artist was being _wasted_ on drawing criminal likenesses.

Regardless, that desire to lie low gave him pause, made him think seriously about what exactly his options were. Magic of any sort was pretty much out, not with so many witnesses around. Sure, bringing up a barrier wouldn’t be as flashy or blatant as setting the thugs on fire or hurling them backward telekinetically, but there would still be enough people watching with enough thoughts to rub together to send him to the gallows. The literal Gallows, in this city. There was a sheathed knife at the back of his waist, concealed beneath his shirt, though that was scarcely better than casting spells. Lukas had no illusions about his general capabilities, and while he could see himself taking on a pair of attackers, _maybe_ three in a pinch if he got very lucky, attacking six people was suicidal. The only result would be to upgrade this robbery to a murder. He’d had to learn how to handle a blade to survive life on the rough side in Ostwick, but he was no warrior. A scrapper, at best. Ugh, why did this gang have to be so brazen as to jump him in the open? If they’d just been smart and cornered him in an alleyway, Lukas could have sent them running with just a fraction of his magical power. Instead, he was stuck in a situation which had no easy resolutions. He couldn’t very well pay them off with what little money he had; he’d sink any chances of finding a decent place to hide in Kirkwall as well as hamper his attempts to move on. Lukas had no intentions of staying in Kirkwall for the long haul, but he’d need to give it at least a few months for the Ostwick templars to give up before he headed further inland.

Lukas smiled pleasantly at the lead mugger.  “I’m sure there’s no need for violence.”

The man flashed him in an ugly grin, holding up his knife. “Not if you turn over your coinpurse, there ain’t.”

Dammit. And here he was hoping that being polite would somehow cause the problem to vanish.

He really needed to start getting more pessimistic.

Well, okay, if fighting was out, magic was very out, and just giving up was definitely out, that didn’t really leave him with much else that he could do. Only thing for it was to rely on what had kept him – quite literally – one step ahead of the templars more times than he could count.

Lukas shrugged his shoulders, turned on the spot, and ran like the blazes.

“Hey! Get back here!”

Ah, it seemed that his nickname had spread to Kirkwall already. He couldn’t say that it was his favourite appellation; he was fonder of ‘You cheating bastard!’ and ‘Get him!’

“Don’t just stand there! Get him!”

And there it was! Exceptionally gratifying to know that, in some small way, Free Marcher muggers had the little somethings in common. Made Lukas feel right at home.

There was a certain technique to fleeing for one’s life. For the uninitiated, it was easy to assume that running away was running away, and that speed trumped all else. However, relying in fleetness of foot alone was only as reliable as the pursuers were foolish, and Lukas had done this far too many times to trust that a gang of thugs in their home territory were stupid. Moreover, Lukas had no experience of Kirkwall whatsoever; just picking a direction and running in it was likely only to lead him to a dead end. In more ways than one.

No. It was easy to run. To _evade pursuit_ was another matter entirely.

Lukas slid between two spectators with the grace of a dancer in an Orlesian ballroom, beyond them so swiftly that they barely had time to react to his passing. Good, that was how he liked it. Unfortunately, there were just enough people around to impede him without providing sufficient cover to blend into, and the kicker was that if they were moving out of Lukas’s way, they would then be _further_ out of the way of the thugs on his tail. Annoying.

Reaching a corner, Lukas planted a foot on the ground and kicked off from it, banking hard to the right and around the turn in an instant. One set of back streets was quite like another in his experience, and once he had the rhythm down, it was a simple matter to let his feet carry him as his mind focused on the instinctive twists and turns of attempting to shake off pursuers. What remained to be seen was exactly what kind of chase the muggers would put up. Thieves, in that regard, were both more and less problematic than templars. They were much more likely to just shrug their shoulders and accept that a mark had escaped, but they were also far quicker on their feet and liable to know a lot more about the routes and shortcuts of a given area. Templars were doggedly persistent, but they weren’t going to catch up any time quickly while trying to run around in plate. Of course, there was also the possibility that this Carta would be too concerned with losing face by letting someone get away. These gangs could be touchy about that kind of thing.

Lukas breathed easily and calmly, quite at odds with the pace of his mad dash, feet thundering across the ground, kicking up little puffs of dirt in his wake. At least he _hoped_ it was dirt. In any case, it was a lucky or well-connected apostate that managed to laze around and get fat, and Lukas had neither friends in high places nor Andraste’s blessing on his side. (if he did, it certainly picked strange ways of manifesting itself). He’d had to get used to running. Honestly, taking a moment to think, it was both rather impressive and vaguely depressing just how many times he been forced to bolt. When one’s exercise regime included ‘cross-city jogging: as far as it takes to shake them’, then maybe it was time to reconsider one’s life choices.

…Well, it would be, but ‘being a mage’ wasn’t exactly something Lukas opted into, and the alternative was surrendering his liberty. Submitting to the Circle wouldn’t be a decision he could back out on if he started having second thoughts, either. He’d heard enough stories from apostate friends who’d managed to escape the templars to know just how damned difficult it would be. In addition it was just… it was a point of pride, really. Lukas had successfully eluded all attempts at arrest for the better part of two decades; contemplating giving up was a faint affront to what passed for his honour.

No, the Circle would only ever lock him up when they earned the right to it by actually catching him for themselves.

Lukas turned another corner, arms pumping as he ran into a narrow alleyway, although frankly from what he’d seen of Darktown so far, it appeared to consistent _entirely_ of cramped passages like this one. Hurdling what he hoped was a pile of abandoned clothes and not a dead body, Lukas zipped all the way through the channel and then, without even looking, took an immediate left. Stopping to catch his bearings would kill all the speed he had going, and that he hadn’t the slightest clue where he was actually made it even more imperative that he didn’t slow down. Back in Ostwick, having a destination in mind, a bolthole that he could run to, that was when navigation was important. It didn’t matter a lick; Lukas was going to be lost regardless of when and where he finally stopped running. He could blunder around trying to figure out where he was after he was safe.

A few more twists and turns should…

With a roar, something slammed into him at shoulder height. More accurately, some _one_ slammed into him, descending from above, which as far as Lukas was concerned was pretty much just cheating. Streets weren’t supposed to have multiple levels!

Those thoughts were insufficient to distract him from the pain of being knocked sprawling onto his chest, slamming hard onto his ribs, all the air whooshing out of his lungs in an instant. His momentum carried him over, rolling him three times through the muck, jarring his elbow and his knee against the ground. For a moment, Lukas saw stars, bright spots dancing in front of his eyes. Then, his body protested quite loudly that while those lights were very pretty, _ow that fucking hurt._ Struggling just to wheeze any air, Lukas foundered his way up to his feet, feeling as if a great weight were pushing down upon his sternum, operating under pure instinct which told him that nobody just crashed into a person like that then walked off whistling.

Lukas didn’t so much duck the blow of the knife as tactically fall over backwards, which took distressingly little effort to allow. His legs were wobbly; his assailant had hit him pretty damn hard, and with the impact of landing on the ground like that, he would be fortunate if he was just winded.

His newfound position on the ground gave him ample opportunity to admire the figure of one of the thugs from before bearing down upon him, a blade clenched in each meaty fist, a snarl on his face. He was missing at least half of his teeth and, Lukas noticed, apparently half of his nose too. For Andraste’s sake, it looked like somebody had squeezed a boar into a tunic! Actually, scratch that, the boar probably would have smelled better. 

There was little time, however, to speculate on the porcine ancestry of his attacker as the mugger lunged for him, bringing both blades down simultaneously. Lukas’s eyes widened, and he reacted in the only way he could think of, bringing up his legs and catching the thug as he moved, boots planting right into the man’s chest. Riding the momentum, Lukas rocked backwards and then _kicked_ up, sending his attacker sailing overhead to land beyond with a crash and a torrent of curses.

Good, he hoped it hurt.

Lukas pushed himself off the ground, wincing with the effort, a hand going to clutch at his ribs, which were beginning to make their displeasure known. It hurt just to breathe; he wasn’t going to work up any decent pace for at least a few minutes, and that was if nothing had been more severely damaged. Without pausing, it was impossible to check. Maker, he hoped he hadn’t cracked a rib, or worse.

He wanted to keep running, stay ahead of any other pursuers, but to turn his back after being cornered would be foolish.  

Still swearing a blue streak, the thug was clambering gracelessly up off the ground. A smear of blood across the man’s face gave Lukas a certain degree of satisfaction. Looked like a broken nose, if he was any judge.

This was sticky. Struggling for air as he was, attempting to flee would just see him be run down. Debilitate the ruffian, and he’d easily be able to point his fellows in the right direction, to the exact same result. That didn’t leave Lukas overflowing with options, though at least this time there didn’t appear to be any prying eyes in the vicinity.

Flames. Lukas had really been hoping to last at least more than a day before killing anyone.

Lukas’s hand slid behind his back and found the hilt of his knife, drawing it in a smooth, practiced motion, flipping the blade into a backhanded grip. The would-be mugger lumbered towards him, a twisted expression of rage on his face. Good. Angry meant that he wouldn’t be thinking straight, wouldn’t be aware to the dangers.

Just as before, the thug went for him, all power and no direction, trusting in strength alone. Which was all well and good; Lukas wasn’t a large man, nor was he well-built. Were this a standard brawl, then he would likely had ended up on his back in short order. His assailant, however, had brought weapons into the mix, and that was another prospect entirely. Brute force could only get you so far, and a dagger was not a tool to be wielded without finesse.

Lukas sidestepped, throwing out his left arm to deflect the mugger’s strike, using the power in the blow against it by fouling its aim – though that slight contact was enough along to send a shockwave across his forearm. Then, without missing a beat, Lukas swiped his blade across in a glittering arc that flashed straight through his attacker’s throat.

A gurgling cry came on the heels of a fountain of blood, spurting out of the gaping wound in the man’s neck, splattering across Lukas’s knifearm. He fell facedown into the dirt, spluttering and choking, legs twitching spasmodically. Lukas grimaced, regret immediately flaring up as he watched the man’s death throes. Scant comfort that the thief had been trying to kill him; ending a life never got any easier. Made him feel like one of the callous, power-mad maleficars that the Circles were ostensibly trying to protect against. He really couldn’t understand those apostates who felt freedom justified any methods, and would freely use murder as a means of staying ahead of the templars. While moral compunctions sometimes needed to take a backseat to pragmatism, killing should be a last resort, not an option to be considered like any other.

Lukas’s hand had been forced, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Wiping off his blade on the dying mugger’s shirt – which on the balance of things may have actually made it dirtier – Lukas sheathed the dagger and left his victim behind. That decision had long since been made; no sense shedding tears over it while he was still in danger.

Still gingerly holding onto his chest, Lukas forced himself into motion. His body was going to hate him for this in the morning, but the first priority was to ensure that he actually _saw_ another morning. Gritting his teeth, he managed to break into something between a job and a brisk walk. Maker, he was even having to favour his right leg a little after he’d jarred the knee with his rough landing. On the run and injured was not how he’d envisaged his first couple of hours in Kirkwall to play out. Why couldn’t _nice_ things ever happen to him by chance? It would make a wonderful change to stumble upon an abandoned coinpurse; though the way his fortunes went, it’d likely wind up to have rats in it or something.

Withholding a vitriolic rant about how he could never catch a break – if only because it hurt too much, and he needed to save his breath for moving – Lukas made his way through the Darktown alleys. Minute after tense, nerve-wracking minute passed without any sound of pursuit, but the strange angles and different levels of this place played havoc with the acoustics. They could easily still be on his tail, just approaching from an angle that he couldn’t detect by ear. After that last thug had jumped him from above… once bitten, twice shy, as they said. He’d been bitten a lot over the years.

Anyway. Priorities. He couldn’t keep this up after landing so heavily; his body was just about ready to give up the ghost, and Lukas didn’t dare resort to healing magic while he was still on the move. That would take too much time, time that would leave him very exposed and very vulnerable. That shifted his objective from just outrunning his pursuers to finding a place where he could lay low for a while. Problematic at best, considering that he hadn’t the foggiest idea where one could hide in Kirkwall. Another reason it would have been very, very nice to be able to get his feet underneath him in the city _before_ the inevitable brushes with trouble.

Crossing into a dingy underpass, Lukas’s eyes were scanning with practiced technique, left and right, left and right. There were always little hideaways in the undercities. The difficulty came not in locating them, but in finding one that was both unknown to the pursuers and unoccupied, or at least filled only with those willing to share and keep themselves to themselves. It would be just typical of the way things were going to seek refuge in a spot that turned out to belong to the very people he was running from.

This vigilance meant that he saw the figure step out of the shadows. Immediately on his guard, Lukas stopped in his tracks and dropped into a ready position, hand snaking around behind himself to settle on his dagger again. Then, he hesitated.

The newcomer wasn’t one of the thugs from before. As a matter of fact, they weren’t even an adult. An androgynously scrawny teenager was the sight that met Lukas’s eyes, ghostly pale, with scraggly black hair that hung lank about their shoulders. Their apparent age did absolutely nothing to put Lukas at ease; it was often the young ones who were much more dangerous.

“Carta is up in arms right as a stranger comes running through the dark part of Darktown,” their voice was soft, and after a moment, Lukas decided that they were probably a girl, between the hair and the tone. “Don’t suppose you know anything about that?”

“No, and you’d be doing me quite a favour if you didn’t either,” Lukas replied, still defensive, cautious. Andraste, _please_ tell him that this child didn’t have anything to do with the Carta. He didn’t know if he had the stomach to handle someone so young in the same manner he’d dispatched the thug.

The girl half smiled. “Not healthy to get on their bad side, but if I don’t know anything about that, I do know something about a place where a friend can rest for a while without worrying about getting a knife in the gizzards.”

“Yeah? And where do you put the knife instead?” Lukas didn’t like this one bit. People in places like Darktown didn’t offer help out of the goodness of their hearts; one undercity was much like another in that regard. There was an angle here, even if the girl wasn’t helping the Carta. Damned if he could figure out what it was though.

She shrugged. “If you don’t need the help, that’s your business, but I haven’t seen you here before and you look hurt. I figure you could use it.”

…Well, this kid was either a lot smarter than most teenagers or someone had fed her a few lines. The frustrating part was that Lukas didn’t have many other options. Going solo would give him a sense of gratification for just as long as it took one of his pursuers to find him and cut his throat.

Great. Lukas just loved the taste of his own pride.

He threw up his free hand in exasperated surrender. The other stayed firmly on his dagger. “All right. You win, but if you’re screwing me over…”

“I’m not. Keep up that attitude though. You’re going to need it down here.”

And wasn’t that a cheery thought.

The girl jerked her head and turned around, not even waiting to see if he was following before setting off. Lukas hesitated only for a moment before heading after her. He’d already made his decision; faking further reluctance was not going to salve his wounded ego.

Lukas did his best to take note of the route that the girl was leading him along. Never too early to learn about a new environment, and it’d help him get around in future. More cynically, if this all went south and the girl turned out to be setting him up, it would give him a better idea of where he could flee.

Lukas liked his cynicism. It was refreshingly honest about just how badly any given situation could turn out.

She moved at a good pace, enough so that Lukas had to push himself a little to keep up. His bruised chest didn’t thank him for it, but the rest of him was grateful for her having a sense of urgency as they took twist after turn through constricted alleys. The longer this went on, the more uneasy he got; too many blind angles for someone to jump him from if she was playing him false. Flames, even if she _wasn’t_ playing him false, if those thugs caught back up to him, they’d have more than ample opportunity for an ambush.

Abruptly, the girl stopped and stepped towards a mouldering door set into the wall. She rapped her knuckles on the surface, and it opened a crack.

“Alyx!” the voice from within sounded young, very young.

The girl smiled, nodded. “Open up, Woolly.”

With an uneasy creak, the door swung inward. The girl – Alyx – glanced to Lukas and tipped her head towards the entrance. “Coming?”

Well, he’d come this far.

Lukas stepped past her and inside.


End file.
